


The Red Book

by igraine1419



Category: The Lord of the Rings - All Media Types, The Lord of the Rings - J. R. R. Tolkien
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-02-06
Updated: 2013-02-06
Packaged: 2017-11-28 10:09:28
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,165
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/673231
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/igraine1419/pseuds/igraine1419
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Elanor inherits the Red Book with all of its blessings and burdens.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Red Book

She thinks of it sometimes, lying there beneath its shroud of red velvet, in the western tower that overlooks the sea. Even at night, if she concentrates hard enough, she fancies she can sense the pulsing of the words beneath the leather and soft muffling cloth. Their urgent whispers sound above the wailing wind, keeping her awake in the thick dark of a winter’s night.

She is still nervous of the dark. Lying awake in the room beneath the towers, staring at the shadows on the walls, she yearns to call for her father. As if all those long years had never been - as if she were lying still in her narrow white bed in the room at Bag End with the curved ceiling like an upturned boat, feeling herself drawn away on a wild green sea full of monsters. Sam would come with a candle and sit by her bed and sing to her, pictures forming like flowers blossoming in the dark. When her father sang, it seemed all evil shrank away and the world was cleansed. Then she might sleep until the dawn broke and the friendly birds began their own songs. 

But memory overtakes her and dreams withdraw. Her father has gone over the sea many years past. He won’t be calling back any lost ships or souls. She steers her own path now, the eldest of all, the head of her family, the eldest of all; someone pronounced both wise and fair, accreditations she feels undeserved. 

When the book was passed into her hands, Elanor’s heart faltered. She knew what this meant. Sam wore his old walking coat and on his back was a small pack of food, it wouldn’t last long, only enough to get him there, not back again. His hands trembled as he took her own and smiled, all those thousands of lines creasing in his face, his eyes young as ever, full of spark for the journey to come. At first she hadn’t wanted it, even as her fingers closed around the old leather, it repelled her. She would cast this book into the sea if it meant her father would stay within the circles of this world. But Sam pressed it close against her chest as they embraced, Elanor taller than her father, staring over his bent head to the horizon beyond, cloud streaked indigo fading to grey where it met the line of the sea. 

‘Keep it safe, Elanor, my dear,’ he said. ‘It’s yours now.’

Tears ran down her face as she watched him walk away, still sure on his feet, his eyes fixed on the far distance, his stick striking out the path before him. The gulls screeched and wheeled in mad excitement, circling in the sky. Elanor watched them for a while, standing with the book still pressed against her heart. She wanted to cry to his retreating back - _But I still need you!_

Later, she saw that her nails had left their impression in the soft red leather. 

She had to find a place for the book. She knew its worth as a relic, but could not look at it that way. It was the story of her father. It explained who he was and who he became. It explained him and it also explained her; her own oddness. When she was growing up, she would look at her friends and wonder why she felt so disconnected. She looked different; taller, her hair more the yellow of pale moonlight, than that ruddy corn colour that was present in so many of her contemporaries, born in the same year, 1420 – the golden year, the year of plenty. She had an elvish look about her, so her father said, as if some of their magic had somehow brushed off on him, like a seed caught on his sleeve and carried home. Some wondered if she was a changeling. This idea haunted her at times so she would fear the fairies would come in her window at night and steal her away. She had taken to keeping her window shut at night, even on the hottest nights of the year, for fear of being taken from her beloved home. So she walked in the circles, around the edge of groups, around the fields alone dreaming, around the busy smial, hoping to be invisible, watching her family like a ghost. Elanor the Fair, they called her. Of the Fair Ones, they might have said, still fearing the unknown, despite their brush with the wider world. 

Once she dreamed she tiptoed into the room at the end of the passage, forgetting. She is certain she saw him, sitting slumped over the red book, his eyes black as if he had been drawing around them in ink. Circles, she thought, he’s drawing circles and circles on those last blank sheets. He looked down and then over to where she hovered by the door, staring. She couldn’t speak, she didn’t know how to address him. He kept to his room now, working at the red book, enslaved to its power. 

‘Hello child,’ he said and he smiled, such a soft peaceful smile, as if she had raised a hand and brushed the cobwebs from his face.

She whispered hello and made a foolish curtsey, as if he were a prince. For he seemed to her an almost mythical figure, who once lived within their home, yet had somehow failed to inhabit it. Her father had attended him frequently, but always made it clear that Mr Frodo was never to be disturbed, that his privacy was to be respected. Her father had kept this rule, even after Mr Frodo had gone away, keeping the room shut up. He was so firm on this matter, she was afraid she would land up in terrible trouble.

‘How tall you’ve grown,’ he remarked, laying down his pen, the ink spilling from the nib where it lay haphazard across the page. She remembers having the desire to run to the book and slam it shut, but instead she stood and did nothing more than stare, transfixed, as children do when looking at something believed to be forbidden, yet greatly desired. 

‘I’m glad you came to see me,’ Frodo said. ‘It’s given me an excuse to put down my pen.’

She smiled and thought what she might say. In the end she said the first words that flew into her head. ‘Is it a good book?’

Frodo sighed and looked her in the eye. ‘It’s a book that needs to be written. Then it’s done and I can rest.’

‘Perhaps you might come and play in the garden then?’

Frodo laughed, a short exhalation. ‘I think I’d like that.’

Elanor nodded, frowning at the book. 

‘You looked just like your father then.’ Frodo grinned. ‘Would you like to tell me what’s the matter?’

‘Dad’ll be angry. We’re not allowed to come in here.’

Frodo blinked, then whispered, laying a finger to his lips. ‘I won’t say a word if you don’t.’

Elanor smiled, backing away. ‘Goodbye,’ she said, lifting the latch.

Frodo slowly turned back to his desk and the troubled pages before him. ‘Goodbye little one,’ he said. 

Of course this could never have happened. Frodo left when she was still a babe in arms and yet she remembers it so clearly she often dreams about it, her thoughts moving in circles. 

She stands up, pulling on her robe and tying it around her slender waist. There is a little moonlight in the room and she can see her face dimly reflected in the long mirror. She looks well for her age, she hasn’t many lines and her hair, although threaded with silver, is still long and thick. The darkness is kind to her. Restless, she strides over to the window and looks out over the wild landscape, dotted with gorse and twisted trees, the scudding clouds racing overhead. There is ice on the inside of the windows; Jack Frost had been doodling in the small hours. Tomorrow will be bleak; the well frozen solid. In another few weeks, Yule will come again and another year pass, short as the last, leaving her stationary somehow, as the year spins on its relentless axis. Putting her hands to her face, she feels her hands light and dry, her bones slightly protruding. 

This is what it means to be the keeper of the Red Book. It becomes your possessor, it haunts your dreams, sometimes she wishes her father had given it to someone else, but knows in her heart that it had to be her, for only she had a part in it, and only she bore the mark of the trails within. 

She feels it as a kind of transparency. As if the world could rush right through her like a tide, or else be lifted and blown on the wind like a skeleton leaf in autumn. She feels as if half of her soul belongs to a hidden world that cannot be attained and now her father has gone to that place, it yearns to join him. The pain of that separation troubles her, and it is a trouble that cannot be put to rest.

She leaves her husband sleeping, lying on his stomach, his face pressed into the pillows, his arms outspread as if in complete abandonment; complete, content, like a well fed cat. She smiles, moving to the doorway and out to the foot of the stairs.

She can almost hear it calling to her – _Elanor, of the Fair Ones, come and seek me._  
It could be the sound of her father singing. It could be a memory of another voice, soft and sad, sensing the shifting tides.

For years she refused to look at it, she put it away in a locked cupboard and hid it beneath a cloth. She knew her father’s story, she had heard it many times, been privy to the horrors and the miracles and the good sense and constancy of her father, but never had she taken up the Red Book. 

When at last she sat down to read, one spring morning, when her family had gone down to the sea, she read from dawn until dusk, without stopping to eat or drink. When she finished she felt ravaged and tired and lay down in her bed, struggling to meld the two figures in her mind – the hero of the Red Book and the father who sang by her bedside. She didn’t want her father to have been witness to such horror and pain. She didn’t like to think that the Ring had taken him even for a second, that it might have left the imprint of itself on him, like her fingernails in the leather. It was as if the book had taken her father and twisted him out of shape. She thought of Frodo in his study, with his tired eyes and she grieved for him then as she’d never grieved for anyone in her life. She left the book to itself and wouldn’t look at it, not until the rage had passed and then it grew quiet and hopeful and she wondered what her father had meant by giving it into her keeping. It was so precious to him.

Elanor mounted the stairs, her hand on the curving rail, the wind wrapping the tower in its arms and shaking it. When she reached the little room at the top, she took a candle from a shelf and lit it. Walking in the light of the wavering flame, she sat at the table and looked down at the velvet cover. Setting down the candle she laid her hand over it reverently. 

‘Is it a good book?’

He hadn’t answered her question. She asked it again now, of herself, watching her face in the window reflected, her eyes large and haunted. 

‘It needs to be done,’ that’s what he said. It was his duty, as it was her father’s and now this inheritance had come to her. Those last few pages were hers. 

She thought of her father’s story, how it ended with her beginning, as though she were a kind of blessing. Circles in circles.

She ran her finger along the spine, opening the pages at random, squinting as if afraid of seeing a frightening picture within. She read a few lines. Her father sat on the bare rocks, cradling Frodo in his arms. Looking up at the smallest speck of light he remarked on its beauty in that bleak place. Elanor smiled, tears welling in her eyes. So much pain was written there, but also such hope, such constancy. She felt warmth moving, tingling in her limbs, filling her up like a shiver, almost, or an embrace. She could almost believe her father was standing beside her and if she could just turn her head, she might see his infectious smile, hear him singing.

Taking up a pen, she began to write.


End file.
